UPLIFT 5K (Tustin - 2020 - 5K)
198 Mile Drive
The Tustin Uplift 5K was a small town run that supported Uplift Pine River. Uplift is a non-profit organization that gives food to students in need on weekends. I got an email from the race director a few days before the race apologizing for a printing error that made their race shirts more purple in color. I was really excited about the mishap. The race staff was beyond accommodating. They offered participants ten-dollar refunds if they wanted to return their shirts.
I originally planned Tustin as a three-day Labor Day weekend trip. I registered for the Manitou Trail Run in Roscommon on Labor Day. Roscommon is minutes away from my family’s cottage in Houghton Lake. It was a great substitute. I was so happy to have a Labor Day run after the Labor Day Bridge Run got cancelled for the first time in 62 years. I was really sad. It ended an incredibly long streak of a tradition that so many Michiganders love. I was starting my own yearly tradition and was two years in as a bridge runner.
Unfortunately, the plan to stay two nights up north got changed to one night when I got last minute work assignments for Labor Day overtime. The pvertime would pay for our awesome hotel in Big Rapids on Friday night. It was really nice to sleep in a hotel bed instead of camping. Our last camping trip in Muskegon was very chilly.
The Country Inn in Big Rapids was very reasonable, allowed dogs for a small fee of $10 and had breakfast! We got a first floor room that was spotless . The TV remote was in a plastic bag with a sticker that read, “Sanitized.” Hotel remotes always grossed me out prior to COVID. The sheets on the bed were all washable. They had a very thin colored sheet on the top of the white blanket to make it look like a comforter. It was very clever. I slept with all the sheets for the first time at a hotel.
(I usually pull comforters off) It was a very cozy room. We watched Monsters Inc, ordered Pizza Hut and got lots of fruit gummies from the vending machine a few doors down the hall.
Before we got to the hotel we ate a very discounted meal at Applebees in Big Rapids. We went to Northend Riverside Park. The park playscape had cool sand diggers and a bunch of different monkey bars. The park ran along the Muskegon River. We caught a glimpse of a mother deer and two babies as they came out of the woods near the playscape. We quietly followed them down a nature trail that led us to a forest of beautiful birch trees. We watched the sunset along the Muskegon River and took a bunch of funny slow-motion videos before we left.
Race morning was rainy and chilly. I was sad that the continental breakfast at the hotel was only cereal, fruit and coffee. The waffle and juice machines were both turned off due to COVID. We packed up lots of cereal and milk for the road. I checked the radar and saw a small clearing in the rain likely to stick around just long enough for me to run. It was sprinkling when I walked up to registration at the church. The rain stopped minutes before the run began and started up again right as I crossed the finish line. The timing was amazing!
The course was a straight line down and back 1.55 miles along a blacktop trail with woods on one side and homes spread out on the other. It had a lot of shade and was wet from the morning rain. The race was not chipped timed. As we crossed the finish we were given index cards with our overall place number. A woman passed me near that end that I had passed in the beginning of the race. She asked me after the race if I had ran in Tustin before. She mentioned my shirt. We talked about running. She lived a few miles away in town. She knew a lot about Uplift. I was able to stretch inside the church out of the rain near the pastor’s office. Their pastor had a lot of cool stuff in his office. He loved nature, animals, weather and fossils.
We left the run and explored Tustin which had a cool Pine River Museum, Hoaglund Hardware (a name we had never heard of) a very small and patriotic post office and other stores with fun names like Sassy Frassy. Tustin’s post office was so small they didn’t have USPS trucks. They had awesome JEEPs that delivered mail. Our hunt for Tustin’s city sign led us out of town down a country road by a golf course. We passed it and had to turn around. On the turn-around we saw a second sign on a hill. Someone had taken the time to lay out and spell Tustin in a grassy area of a hill. Each letter was 20 feet in length made from white rocks. I knew I had to get out of the car and walk up to the letters while Jason took the picture from a distance. It was epic! It felt like a scene from Pet Sematary. We took a picture by the first Tustin sign we had seen after we got the rock sign. The regular sign was a cool sign too. It listed all the businesses in the town. You could see up close that some were newer with brighter colors. I haven’t found a city sign yet that listed all the town’s businesses.
On the way home we stopped at Newaygo State Park. I’ve always wanted to visit the city of Newaygo. We needed a good leg stretch before our trip back home. We explored the part of the park by the campground. I really liked the camp sites set up at Newaygo State Park. They gave campers very secluded lots. There were so many camp dogs! My introvert husband was stopping the van to let me out to meet and greet them more he wanted. One giant dog named Max turned out to be a Kuvasz when I thought it was a Great Pyrenees. We walked to a beach clearing where the kids went swimming for a bit. We found a nice camp mug and fishing reel abandoned in the sand by the beach. There were really cool wooden stairs to climb and the boat launch was close to us. We saw a racing speed boat go across the Hardy Dam Pond. The forest had a lot of mushrooms and black squirrels.
Things I take from the Tustin Uplift 5K are:
1. The two hydration bottles that they gave away to random participants after the race. It was a nice touch for a small town run in addition to their comfy “mistakenly” purple shirts. ^_^
2. The place cards given to us at the finish. I have never gotten a place card before. It was unique and cool.
3. My first run wearing my official “Mandy Runs Michigan” shirt. The material was not as hot as I thought it would be and did well in the light rain shower. I just have to come up with a better logo that has Michigan in it.
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